Saakashvili’s party allies attack former intelligence head

Tabula editor Tamar Chergoleishvili called Data Akhalaia a ‘maniaki’ (a serial killer). (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Supporters of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s party, the National Movement, are speaking out against a former head of the domestic intelligence service CSD/KUD, who criticized the party strongly last week.

A message was posted to the Facebook page of former KUD head Data Akhalaia, accusing the party secretary Vano Merabishvili, a former Interior Minister, of betraying his own party and friends in pursuit of his own interests.

Even though the authenticity of the message hasn’t been established, former officials of Saakashvili’s government have spoken out against Akhalia, and the president said he had only seen him three or four times after the National Movement seized power in a bloodless coup in 2003 known as the Rose Revolution.

Tamar Chergoleishvili, Editor in Chief of the magazine Tabula and an open supporter of the National Movement, called Data Akhalaia a ‘maniaki’; a word which in Georgian means literally ‘a serial killer’. Chergoleishvili appeared at the party’s rally on Friday but refused to comment.

Her husband Giga Bokeria, Secretary of the National Security Council, however, said that ‘there are always certain groups in each team which have a different position on different issues’.

“But the delirium and absurdity that we read in the statement of Data Akhalaia and as his lawyer also confirmed really belonged to Data Akhalaia and there is a clear trace of a game with the new government,” he said after the rally on Friday. “It is clear to everyone and there is no split in the party’.

Bokeria says he thinks there might always be some persons in a party or some officials, who ‘later degrade’.

Data Akhalaia was rumored to be planning to come to Georgia for the UNM rally, but still remains abroad at an unknown location. In his letter Akhalaia wrote that he plans to come to Georgia soon.